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Q & A

A: when you reach the top, and pass it, you end up in the south. So yes it will loop around

Q4: how many races, how many units, unique units for differenct races?

A: I’ve not decided, but defianatly Greek, Roman, and Persian. there will be different units for different races, yes, each will have special abilitys.

Q5:how many techs?

A: again undecided, and what do you mean by techs?

Q6:how many buildings?

A: 200 about unique buildings for different races

Q7: 2D?

A: Yes, but no. it will be an isometric game, but it wont be put into a 3D game-making software.

Q8: isometric?

A: of course

Q9: estimated play time for one game?

A: A long time like 10 hours or so, therefor there will be a save button.

Q10: why do you need 2 ‘pixel artists’ and a ‘spriter’ and an animator?

A: beacause this will be a shit big project, I will need as much help as possible. I’m one of the artists I just need one more helping me get it done. 2 minds are always better then one… well unless hes a zombie.

I probably wont need an animator but any animator that helps, will be extremely useful.

Tile based I assume?
How big a map? variable size? a big rectangle or does it loop around? how many races, how many units, unique units for differenct races? how many techs? how many buildings? is the city mayor part abstracted, or the civilization moving armies around part? 2D? top down? isometric? estimated play time for one game? save games? why do you need 2 ‘pixel artists’ and a ‘spriter’ and an animator?

A: when you reach the top, and pass it, you end up in the south. So yes it will loop around.

Q4: how many races, how many units, unique units for differenct races?

A: I’ve not decided, but defianatly Greek, Roman, and Persian. there will be different units for different races, yes, each will have special abilitys.

Q5:how many techs?

A: again undecided, and what do you mean by techs?

Q6:how many buildings?

A: 200 about unique buildings for different races

Q7: 2D?

A: Yes, but no. it will be an isometric game, but it wont be put into a 3D game-making software.

Q8: isometric?

A: of course

Q9: estimated play time for one game?

A: A long time like 10 hours or so, therefor there will be a save button.

Q10: why do you need 2 ‘pixel artists’ and a ‘spriter’ and an animator?

A: beacause this will be a shit big project, I will need as much help as possible. I’m one of the artists I just need one more helping me get it done. 2 minds are always better then one… well unless hes a zombie.

I probably wont need an animator but any animator that helps, will be extremely useful.

I mean let people choose a size for the map. If you’re having multiple sizes, you may as well.

“what do you mean by techs?”

Technologies, research, upgrades….

“unique buildings”

I assume they’ll be mostly identical, just with different names/descriptions/graphics for different races, otherwise it’ll be hell to balance.

And Persia under various guises was consistently Romes nemesis, and warred with greek city states.

You really need to pick a number so you can work out how many sprites you’ll need. Don’t try to name each building/whatever, just pick a number….say 120….and later you can think of 120 different units.

I’m not sure how the citybuilding is going to interact with the civ style main map. It sounds like you want it to take a larger role than it does in civilisation.

He’d be hard-pressed to make a working demo of concepts as nebulous as “There will be 20 races”, “unlock 50 (maybe) Tech’s [sic]”, and my personal favorite: “Q5:how many techs? / A: again undecided, and what do you mean by techs?”.

OK, here’s what you need to define exactly, and by define I mean:
- Give it a unique name.
- Define, name and assign all of its attributes.
- Define and codify all possible interactions with all other elements of the game.

By this definition, you need to define:
- 20 civilizations (since it’s obvious at this point your chosen world is some sort of alternate antiquity Earth, they’re all humans, so your ‘race’ term is, well, racist.)
- 50 (maybe! :) ) technologies. If you know what I mean.
- 200 unique buildings.
- 4 game modes and what makes each of them unique.

Only when you have all that detailed on paper can you start coding with a conceivable expectation of ever seeing the end of it. So get cranking buddy, 200 buildings, go!

You don’t need any history research (yet). It doesn’t matter whether your nations are Greece & Persia or Romulans & Klingons, you need to decide on the mechanics. As I said, you don’t need to know what any of it’s called yet, it doesn’t matter if your units are medieval, magic, or aliens, at this stage….first you need to decide how many of them there will be for each nation. Then how many if any will be truly unique (different everything) & how many if any only appear unique (same stats & mechanics but with different name & graphics). Then what stats they’ll have….original civ just had movement, attack, defense….and I’d recommend not making it much more complex than that. Then how many images you want of them: one avatar/icon for the build menu, and one for the map at least……but mebe also one for some sort of selection AI, one for ‘attacking pose’, ‘defensive pose’, ‘moving’ ‘standing still’, corpse, being hit, etc…..

Then you need to decide how big each icon will be, and how big units’ll be on the main map (all the same size a la civ?), and how big in the city if you want them there…..then, when you know what they need to do, fit, how many of them you want, spread over how much difficulty (clubmen to tanks, or clubmen to swordsmen?)…and how many of each type & size of graphic you’re going to need for each……then it begins to matter what you call them.

You also need to have a really really clear idea of how the map and the city will interact with each other.

My advice right now: draw your game. I don’t mean artistic crap, I mean draw exactly how you want your game to appear….I’m guessing you’ll end up with 800*600 res, so get some A4 and draw (or do it in a graphics editor, whatever) each screen for that, plan out the UI, how many screens there’s going to be (one for map, one for city….but maybe upgrades/buildings/whatever menu covers whole screen while it’s open too?) Draw EVERY single button you’ll need for the entire game, every single space for text, every single graphic (just draw them as blobs, you only need to know where they’ll be & size for this exercise)…..you’ll need to decide the scale at this point, eg: if the whole game is 600 pixels tall, and mebe 100 pixels of UI at the bottom (or 50 pixels, or 300, work it out), on the map how big will units appear?

If one unit covers a tile, much like civ, and each tile is either grassland/forest/mountain/whatever (so it’s pretty abstract)…..then you can’t really have awesomely detailed 100 pixel high…..varangian guardsman….or you’d only be able to see 5 tiles x/y on screen at a time, which is crap.

This is the difference between design and idea….you can start thinking about making the game (as for tools, let your programmer decide…..I recommend flashdevelop) once you can give an exact number of how many sprites you need drawn, and have a list of all the buttons and what they do, and where they’ll go.

EDIT: Oh ya, I’m following this thread because I so know that feel of having a really cool game in your head and and struggling to explain exactly why it’s awesome, so if you can get me an image of the layout & list of attributes I could possibly (edit:seeming less likely now, I think I had the wrong idea of your intended game) throw together a basic empty engine you may be able to fill in yourself.

“I wont but the more the faster we will do this I’m saying 2 maximum programmers”
That’s really not how it works :)

“Alright so draw you say, So I’m thinking about making a few buttons right now. Soo I’d say GIMP for the buttons ?”

No, I mean just use…paint or anything to draw the game. Just a sketch that’ll never be used, for you to work out the layout…..so you can work out for sure how big each button needs to be so they all fit neatly where you want them, how big a building/unit needs to be in the play area so it looks right, etc. Something where someone asks what the game will look like, you can send them it….not as an advert of the standard of graphics, just to show the layout. How many buttons are there on the main play area if you don’t have any extra menus open? how big is the play area itself? etc. I’ll show you what I mean (see edit).

Also, you don’t need pngs for buttons, a programmer can code them. Maybe you’ll want to draw really fancy buttons if you think the code ones aren’t intricate enough, but that’s the sort of polish you do right at the end when the game is working.

“Yes well your going to have to strategically place your city with good resources plus excellent geographic defense.”

Yeah, but I mean things like…..if the main civ style map is tile based (is it?), does the city on the map only take up one tile, like in civ…..or as you only get one city (right?) and it’s more important, is it 2*2 tiles, 5*5….whatever. How does it interact with the map……if I have a tank on the map and I move it to an enemies city……what happens? Does it enter the simcity style city building screen, or does the combat happen on the map, like in civ?

“Edit So lets start by getting the names of the building and the “Techs” so I have a few Techs in mind:”

First, decide if all nations will get all the same techs available to unlock. Then, before you name them you might want to know how many buildings/units you’re going to have, to get a rough idea of how many buildings/units each piece of research might unlock….

EDIT: Okay here is what I’m talking about when I say draw the game: the reds are enemies (small, normal, large, boss), the green is the character:everything else is a UI element.

Some people might recognise that game :)

You can look at that, and rearrange it, and make sure you’ve got all the buttons & info you want, work out the exact size of each part, pick how big the character & enemies should be to get the right combo of detail and sight range. This is an example diagram of a prexisting hack n slash game, not a suggestion for your game, but you get the idea I hope.
Then you can start drawing them because you’ve got a solid plan of how they’re going to fit on the screen & their size.

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